HANDS OFF VENEZUELA!

This is the message that 27 cities from the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom are sending to the Bush administration and the United States government on December 2 ... the First International Venezuela Solidarity Day.

HANDS OFF VENEZUELA!

This is the message that 27 cities from the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom are sending to the Bush administration and the United States government on December 2 ... the First International Venezuela Solidarity Day.

This historic effort also includes an ongoing email campaign that has collected over 5,000 signatures and is continuing to grow. Both the day of actions and the email campaign are demanding an end to US attempts to destabilize Venezuela's democracy and its elected government.

The Bush administration has portrayed Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez as a dictator and a threat to the interests of the United States. Both assertions are utterly false.

Venezuelan voters have three times affirmed Chavez as their choice for leadership, have ratified a new, progressive constitution, and have repeatedly elected Bolivarian majorities to the National Assembly. A recent survey of Latin American countries shows that Venezuela has the largest majority of citizens who regard their country as "totally democratic."

All sides agree, including those that oppose Chavez, that more people are actively involved in democratic processes than ever before.

The Venezuelan government has hardly been a threat to the United States. The Venezuelan government has kept oil flowing to the US, and has offered aid to alleviate disruptions caused by both the massive electrical blackout that occurred in the Northeastern US and by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

Venezuela is subsidizing cheap oil shipments to poor neighborhoods in the US and is seeking to enlarge this program.

On this anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, people of the United States are stepping forward to call for an end to US neocolonial domination of the hemisphere. We are calling for a new doctrine, a doctrine of Solidarity.